Chicago's parking fines are the same on paper. The debt they leave behind is not.

A late fee isn't a fine for parking wrong. It's a fine for being unable to pay fast.

Here's the whole mechanism, in plain terms:

1. You get a $60 street-cleaning ticket. So far, everyone pays the same.
2. If you pay within about three weeks, that's the end of it.
3. If you can't — you're short that month, the notice went to an old address, you're deciding between the ticket and the light bill — the city doubles it to $120.
4. Unpaid, it heads toward collections, then a boot, then your car, then your driver's license.

Nothing about the parking changed. The only thing being taxed is not having $60 on hand this week. That's a penalty that, by design, lands on whoever has the least cushion — and it compounds.

Each dot is a neighborhood. The line is unmistakable.

Horizontal: how Black the neighborhood is. Vertical: the share of its ticket debt that never gets paid. Dot size is ticket volume. As one goes up, so does the other — a correlation of +0.89.

It isn't only race — it's poverty, and in Chicago the two are bound together (unpaid debt tracks lower income at −0.88). Heavily Latino, lower-income ZIPs sit high on the chart too. But the heaviest burden, in dollars and in unpaid debt, falls on the Black South and West Sides.

Sorted by who lives there, the ladder is clean.

Read across the top row and the bottom row. In majority-Black neighborhoods, nearly half of every dollar billed is a late-fee penalty and 70% of the debt is never collected — the fine did its damage without ever funding the city. In majority-white neighborhoods, the fine is smaller, mostly paid, and rarely doubles.

Englewood and Sauganash pay the same $60 ticket. They don't pay the same price.

And it isn't only about income: Beverly (60643) is a solidly middle-class, 69%-Black neighborhood earning $80,852 — yet 63% of its ticket debt goes unpaid, close to the poorest white areas' opposite. Race predicts the debt even where the paychecks don't.

Method, in the open.

• Tickets: the City of Chicago's own ticket records, obtained by Freedom-of-Information request — 35.7M citations. Each carries the registered owner's ZIP. "Billed" = payments received + amount still due; "late fee" = the amount billed above the original fine; "unpaid" = still owed ÷ billed.
• Demographics: U.S. Census, ACS 2024 5-year, by ZIP — race (table B03002) and median household income (B19013).
• This is a neighborhood-level (ecological) pattern. It shows that ZIPs with more Black residents carry far more unpaid, doubled ticket debt. It does not claim any individual was treated a certain way, and the correlation itself doesn't prove intent.
• But the mechanism is not a mystery. A flat doubling penalty for late payment is regressive by construction — it costs the most to those least able to pay on time. The data simply shows where that lands.
• Caveats: figures are all-years, billed basis; "unpaid" includes debt later discharged in bankruptcy — itself part of the story (Chicago ticket debt drove thousands of Chapter 13 filings). Recent tickets are still maturing.